John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

“I have the corpse of the preacher down in my lair; he’ll have us wed within the hour. I’ll have to strangle you if’n I ever get Vanity, for she was promised to me, and I cannot have two wives, for that would be against the law.”

Well, that was evidently the wrong thing to say. The vulture opened its beak and screamed. A loud, harsh, terrible scream.

The temperature dropped. One second it was merely cold; the next it was numbing.

Headmaster Boggin dropped lightly out of the sky.

Twenty-foot-long pinions swept the air to either side of him. His long red hair was floating as if it were under water. He was bare-chested and bare-foot, wearing baggy purple pantaloons, tied off above the knee. He wore a ring on his big toe, set with a green marble stone. It made him look like a pirate, or the King of Siam.

His wings were the same color as his hair, a bright red with brown and gold highlights. Unlike Corus, he used his wings, and was flapping them energetically.

He landed on a rock above the cave, at a spot where I could not see him. All I could see was Grendel’s face, slack with fear and hate.

“Hi ho! Well, now Grendel, I must say I am… very… disappointed. It seems to me that we had an agreement. Back when all this started, you swore fealty to me.”

Grendel squinted up at him. The hate was fighting with the fear on his face.

“My will is stronger than yours is, my dear Grendel. Do you know how I know that? Because once you swore to me that you would not do this thing you are doing now. That means your desire is imperfect. Funny things, oaths. Why, do you remember that oath, my dear Grendel? Certainly you do? Of course you do. I see that you do.”

The hate melted away, and the fear grew. Grendel’s lip started trembling. His eyes blinked tears.

Boggin’s voice came smoothly: “We are all one big happy family, committed… may I say devoted?… devoted to the same goal. But from time to time we are tempted, and, yes, I see how one might be tempted, to pursue some private pleasure of our own at the expense of the group. We cannot have that, Grendel, can we? Do you think we can have that?”

Grendel fell to his knees. “Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me. I have a mother, she’s got no one but me. Please—oh please—”

I smelled urine on him. He had wet himself.

“Oh dear, now stop all this blubbering. It looks bad in front of the children. I will tell you what. I will let you off with a reminder. At some point during the next week or ten days—and you will not know when it is about to happen—you shall have an accident, Grendel. A bad one. You will chop your foot with a firewood axe, perhaps, or crush all your bones in your hand with a hammer. Or fall off a ladder and break your legs in three places. Or maybe you will slip while pouring the tea, and scald your crotch with a terrible, terrible third-degree burn. Something like that.

“Now, the thing is, Grendel, oh, and you will love this part… if you do something terrible, simply terrible, to yourself first, the accident won’t happen. You see? If you can get up the nerve to poke an eye out with an awl or stick your hand into the blades of a rotary fan, then you will get to pick where the damage will land. I mean, you would rather have your left hand maimed than your right hand, wouldn’t you? You’d rather have an eye splashed with acid than a testicle, I am sure.

“Well, think about your options, Grendel, and think about what you’ve done. We do not need to say anything more about this little incident, do we? You are sorry, very sorry, aren’t you? Yes, I thought you were. Now, run along. I will see to our Miss Windrose.”

Grendel turned, gave me one last sad, hopeless look, and ran away.

Immediately I began making a nasal yelling noise through the gag. My legs were suddenly tense with pain; certain sections of the rope now bit into my flesh uncomfortably; others had grown strangely slack. I started wiggling and wriggling to see if I could get out of them.

Boggin dropped down in front of the cave mouth. He looked down at me with a strange expression.

“Why Miss Windrose, you look quite, ah… fetching… at the moment. But I suppose it cannot be comfortable. I hope you will permit me to unlace you?”

“Fetching” he called it. With my ankles and wrists two inches apart, my back was as arched as it could be. My elbows were pinned behind my back, practically touching. This combined to thrust my breasts out so far, that I finally knew, in that moment, how Vanity must feel at all times.

Maybe he thought the gag cutting into my lips was cute. Men must like it when girls can’t talk back.

I am sure that being mussed, and scared to death, and angry, somehow also added to my sex appeal. My hair had come unbound and loose during my adventures; I assume Mr. Glum did not like me wearing it braided up.

With Mr. Glum absent, I was able to crane my neck partway into the “other” direction, and push the gag with my tongue in that direction until it turned red and got less dense. Once it was an inch or two into four-space, the scarf (or, more specifically, the shadow cast by the scarf) lost the ability to interact with matter, became permeable, passed “through” my head without sensation, and landed with a soft noise on the pine needles beneath my cheek.

Well, I was glad the thing did not fall straight to the center of the Earth, though I was at a loss as to why it didn’t. It was my favorite scarf.

“Thank you, but no thank you, Headmaster,” I said in an irked tone of voice. “I think I can manage better without you!”

I turned my body a little sideways into the “blue” direction, so I was occupying a small 3-D cross-section, and the ropes seemed to turn red and recede from me in all directions. With a shimmer and a jerk I jumped to my feet, as the world flickered dark and then bright again as I passed briefly into and out of hyperspace. The world’s normal colors returned as I tilted back into full cross-section.

The ropes slid “through” my body in a spray of red sparks and landed in a heap on the pine needles.

With a soft thud, my boots and socks and pants and coat and blouse and bra and undies and everything else landed atop them. Suddenly, it felt very cold.

“Oh, you’re right, Miss Windrose,” said Boggin, an unreadable expression on his face, “that is much better.”

He cleared his throat and ostentatiously turned his back on me. He spoke without turning his head. “While you are getting dressed, please allow me to ask a question or two. I must confess to being mildly surprised at your own lack of surprise. Did someone tell you, Miss Windrose, that I had wings?”

I have to admit that I had been relieved when Boggin, angel-like, splendid and handsome, had swept down from heaven to rescue me from Grendel Glum. Had I not been in the midst of trying to escape from his school, I would have felt more gratitude, I suppose. Boggin did not want me to be carried off and married to a man-sea monster; he did not even want me to be embarrassed.

I was grateful; he was my white knight; my rescuer. Except…

Except the others had all been caught by now. I was the only one left. I was the only one at liberty. If we all got caught, our chance of escape again was nearly zero. If one of us was still at large, able to move freely, learn to use her powers, to get help, to contact our parents in Chaos, then she would be able to sneak back and get the others out. Right?

Even if she didn’t want to. Even if all she wanted to do was be a good sport, admit she had lost this round, and go slinking back to her cold bed in her locked room at night, safe and sound, in the same room she had always slept in as a child. Cold and safe. Safe in Boggin’s keeping.